


steady hands, a strong heart

by salvage



Series: unfamiliar territory [1]
Category: Ripper Street
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Medical Procedures, very detailed and graphic description of suturing a wound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 16:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3536411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvage/pseuds/salvage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reid sits upright, tossing his thin wool blanket aside, staring still. “My god, are you bleeding?” The cot creaks as he hurriedly scrambles to stand.</p>
<p>Jackson shrugs with his left shoulder, then winces when it jars his neck. “Probably a little,” he says.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A missing scene from Season 2, Episode 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	steady hands, a strong heart

**Author's Note:**

> So many thanks to [ladyofdragonflies](http://ladyofdragonflies.tumblr.com) for giving me invaluable information about suturing procedures and 1800s sterilization practices and [Suzelle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzelle/pseuds/Suzelle) for beta reading a fic for a show she hasn't even watched. YET.
> 
> Please be aware that this story contains graphic descriptions of suturing a wound.

Reid is sleeping in his office, just as Jackson had expected. The slats over the windows are drawn tight; when Jackson opens the door, a dim slice of yellow light falls across Reid’s sleeping form. He thinks he closes the door quietly but when Reid’s eyes flutter open, he remembers that he is still drunk.

Reid blinks, then squints at him. “Are you drunk?” His voice is rough.

“It’s always the first thing on everybody’s mind,” Jackson mumbles to himself. He pulls the visitor’s chair toward him with one ankle and falls heavily into it with a soft “oof.”

Reid sits upright, tossing his thin wool blanket aside, staring still. “My god, are you bleeding?” The cot creaks as he hurriedly scrambles to stand.

Jackson shrugs with his left shoulder, then winces when it jars his neck. “Probably a little,” he says. He had intended to ask Caitlin—Susan, he knows, but he’s feeling maudlin tonight and she’ll always be Caitlin in his heart or whatever she claims he has in place of one—to stitch it up for him but he got distracted, seeing her. He remembers that this is why he’d come here.

“Jackson, what happened to you?” Reid’s immediate concern is intensely gratifying after Caitlin’s cold refusal.

“I find myself in need of assistance.” Jackson smiles his most disarming smile up at Reid, who’s come to perch at the edge of his desk, hovering over Jackson with wide, concerned eyes.

“Of—of course.” Reid reaches out with one hand, just a little, then draws it back. “Whatever you need.” He glances at Jackson, eyebrows drawing together, mouth opening, as though forming a question, but it never makes it to his tongue. For that, Jackson is grateful.

“How steady are your hands?” Jackson asks, not like he has a choice at this point. “It doesn’t matter. We’re goin’ to the dead room.”

“Yes, of course,” Reid says. He pulls on his discarded button-down over his undershirt, but leaves his collar and cuffs in a neat concentric stack on the corner of his desk.

Jackson pushes himself up from the chair but overbalances and nearly pitches forward, caught only by Reid’s hand, palm flat under his collarbone. “Thanks,” he mumbles, straightening his shirtsleeves.

They leave the office together, walking down the dim, quiet halls of the station shoulder to shoulder. Jackson can feel Reid hovering a hand near the small of his back, ready to catch him again, and a very distant part of him feels insulted. He’s about done feeling emotions for the night, though; he lets it go and feels a sort of peace fall over him.

He makes an unsteady circuit of the room, dragging one hand along the wall as he raises the flame in each of the gas lamps, then brings his medical kit out of a glass-fronted cabinet and sets it on the table. “Go wash your hands. You ever sewed up a wound before?” He glances at Reid, who is hovering at his side.

Reid shakes his head minutely, eyes fixed on Jackson’s hands unpacking needles, thread, gauze, setting them side by side in a somewhat uneven row. Jackson looks at him and jerks his head pointedly toward the sink; Reid goes.

Jackson sighs. “You ever sewed before?” He fills a bowl with a carbolic acid solution, rinses the needle and thread with it.

Reid is silent as he turns the taps off and Jackson turns to look at him again, feeling the bandages around his neck again flood warm and wet. “I am… aware of the general principle.”

“Good enough,” Jackson mumbles. He drags two chairs over and sits, positioning himself so that there’s ample light illuminating his left side. “Thread the needle.” He tries to unwind the gauze from around his neck, fingers scrabbling uselessly at the knot he’d tied when he was far soberer. “Fuck,” he mumbles.

“Here,” Reid says, gently lifting one of Jackson’s hands away. Jackson drops his hands unceremoniously into his lap. Reid slides one finger under a layer of gauze and uses a small pair of medical scissors to cut it away, unwinding the fabric from around Jackson’s throat. The last layer sticks to dried blood at the edges of the wound, tugging it open a little more when Reid pulls it away, and they both hiss, Jackson in pain, Reid in what Jackson hopes is sympathy.

“Should I ask?” Reid murmurs. He positions the other chair perpendicular to Jackson’s, facing his left side, and sits, close enough for their legs to press together.

“Thread the needle,” Jackson repeats. He feels a drop of blood trickle leisurely down his throat, seeping into the already-dried stain on his shirt collar. “Start at one end, use stitches that are about this far apart.” Jackson indicates by holding a thumbnail up to the edge of his cuff. “Pull just enough for the edges to come together. Tie it off in a square knot—overhand, then underhand.”

“Right.”

Jackson closes his eyes. There is silence, presumably as Reid threads the needle. Jackson has no interest in seeing how much his hands shake. Caitlin’s wouldn’t—he stops himself, takes a breath, deliberately places his hands on his thighs. Not now.

“Ready?”

Jackson hums and tilts his chin up a little. Reid’s palm is warm where he braces it against Jackson’s skin, fingertips little spots of heat where they hold his wound closed. Jackson takes a breath.

It hurts, Jackson isn’t drunk enough for it not to hurt, and he feels himself make a little involuntary noise in his throat. He grits his teeth.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Reid says softly. The needle pricks again and Jackson can feel the thread dragging, can feel the elastic stretch of his skin as it’s drawn together again. His hands tighten and he drags them down his thighs just to distract himself. Reid’s fingers fumble with the ends of the thread, tugging at the edges of the wound, and Jackson winces, hisses out a pained breath. 

“I’m—”

“Keep going,” Jackson slurs between clenched teeth.

Reid eventually knots the thread and Jackson hears the soft snick of the scissors beside his ear. The next stitch is easier, if only because he knows what to expect of this, now, and he concentrates on holding still; on Reid’s short, even breaths; on Reid’s warm hands on his throat; on Reid’s knee where it presses into the outside of Jackson’s thigh. The painful tug of the thread as Reid struggles through each knot. The pinch of the needle and the drag of the thread, the pull of his skin.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. If he hadn’t—if Caitlin had—anyway. If it had been timed better he would have been at the initial numb-and-weightless stages of drunk when this was happening, instead of the dead-limbed exhaustion he feels now, unable to even unearth the memory of when he finished or lost the bottle of cheap whiskey he’d had only a few hours ago.

“Just a few more,” Reid says. Pinch, drag, pull. The clumsy brush of the backs of Reid’s fingers on the sensitive skin of his throat as he ties knots, the tug of the thread. The soft snip of the scissors as he cuts the excess. Pinch, drag, pull.

“You really won’t ask,” Jackson says, now that the pain is under control. His throat vibrates against Reid’s hand.

“If I thought you’d tell me, I’m sure I would,” Reid replies. He ties the next knot, more deft as he goes along.

Jackson huffs out a breath that could be a laugh. “Saving your breath, then.” He chokes on the last syllable as the needle pricks his skin again.

“This is the last one.” The short drag of the thread, the brush of Reid’s fingers.

Jackson gestures with the fingers of one hand as he catches his breath. “Now the bowl.” He can’t seem to lift his hand, though. “You gotta… make a little pad of gauze, soak it in the solution, press it on.” He takes a breath, braces himself. “Do it,” he says through his teeth.

The pain is bright and immediate, blossoming across his throat, down to his shoulder and up the side of his face, flickering through his nerves like a current. He makes a punched-out noise when Reid removes the gauze.

“Now, wrap it up.” Jackson’s reaching the end of his rope, voice strained, nearly unable to move his own body.

Reid gently winds gauze around Jackson’s throat, holding one end in place with his warm fingertips. He ties it off but leaves one hand resting on Jackson’s shoulder. Jackson doesn’t look at him, or can’t.

“You’re not going back to Tenter Street,” Reid says, more a statement than a question.

“I can sleep here.” Jackson blinks at the white tiled floor of the laboratory.

“Sleep in my office.” Reid pulls Jackson out of the chair with one hand tight on his arm, steering him out of the laboratory and down the halls of the station. Jackson doesn’t protest.

The cot in Reid’s office is not, objectively, comfortable, but Jackson sinks into it anyway, eyes closing nearly immediately. He carefully turns so he’s on his right side, adjusting his head so the least amount of pressure is on the newly stitched cut on the side of his neck. He is vaguely aware of the sound of Reid fidgeting in his office chair, probably propping his feet up on the corner of his desk, crossing his arms over his chest. If he were the kind of man to apologize, he would apologize for displacing Reid from his bed.

“Thanks,” he says instead, voice soft and rough in the dark room.

“If… if you cannot go back to Tenter Street…” Reid begins. There’s a pause. Jackson’s wound throbs. “You’re welcome to stay in my home for a time.”

Jackson rolls onto his back, one hand lightly pressed to the side of his throat, facing Reid as much as he can. “You sure?” 

“It is empty save for me, now. It would be no trouble.” 

Jackson looks at him for a long moment. “Thank you.” 

Reid clears his throat. “Go to sleep,” he says, and Jackson does.


End file.
